Whether you’re job seeking after ‘A’ Levels or a degree, why consider a career in IT? We spoke to Oscar Richardson, a recent Business Information Technology graduate, who joined our Service Desk earlier this year, to find out why.
‘I’d always had a fascination with technology, which started in my early teens with building my own PC in my spare time as it’s something you could do at home. I think as an island community we’re slowly improving on the digital front but when I was at school, opportunities and understanding of tech opportunities were fairly limited when compared to other areas of the school curriculum. I suppose that as it’s such a fast-paced and evolving industry, the curriculum side of it is slower to catch up.
Couple this with a, perhaps unfair, perception of IT being something like Channel 4s ‘The IT Crowd’ – a bunch of geeks sitting in a basement room waiting for the phone to ring – and it’s easy to see how IT has suffered from an image crisis over the years.
However, this couldn’t be further from the truth. I’d love to know of one career option that has gone from the basement to the boardroom in such a short space of time. An industry that is vibrant, growing, and with new technologies emerging all the time. An industry that has real-time positive effects on all businesses, no matter what their size and sector. An industry that is massively changing the way we live, both in business and leisure. Long gone are the days where a company’s in-house IT department was only called upon when something was broken and needed fixing. Now, IT is shaping the way companies are run and that’s an incredible industry transformation over such a short period of time.
It allows you to work all over the world, to work in-house or, like myself, in a managed service provider where you’re exposed to a complete arrange of businesses’ IT requirements across the island.
Who doesn’t want to go to work each day and be challenged mentally? We’re all constantly learning something new and working out how we can apply it to each of the clients we work with. Working in IT means you can’t afford to sit back and do the same processes day after day. Who doesn’t want to be at the forefront of all the incredibly exciting emerging technologies and being a part of how they are digitally changing Guernsey?
It’s a real team player sector because the collective knowledge of an IT team is what makes us, as a managed service provider, so invaluable to our clients. We’ve all developed our own areas of specialism, whether that be infrastructure, cyber security or digital transformation etc – we all share that knowledge, making sure our clients get the most up to date and knowledgeable resources.
I think people entering today’s job market are looking to work in an industry that’s growing, is exciting, will keep their interest and develop in ways that haven’t even been thought of yet. For me, IT ticks all those boxes and more.’
